


The Space Between Breaths

by KallanEboi



Series: These are the things that are strange and yet somehow normal [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Off-screen Character Death, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KallanEboi/pseuds/KallanEboi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The space between one breath and the next can stretch to eternity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between Breaths

**Author's Note:**

> Part six of the "These are the things that are strange and yet somehow normal" series. Can be read separately, but it'll make more sense if you read the first five parts.

Inhale. Exhale. 

I had forgotten (because I had known, had realised, in those days before Sherlock) how loud my own breathing could be in a silent room.

Two days after it happens, I catch a newspaper headline out of the corner of my eye. “THE REICHENBACH FALLS” it proclaims over a picture of Sherlock in the deerstalker. It feels like a punch in the stomach, deep like a knife in my ribs, and I can’t catch my breath. I keep walking, past the store that was originally my destination and back to Baker Street.

There are reporters camped on my doorstep, cameras at the ready. Mrs Hudson ignores them, going about her business as usual. I don’t go out much, not after seeing that headline. They’ve won, the battlefield has been lost. The ambiguous they, the criminals, the jealous, the ones who can’t see, they’ve won. 

Some days it’s all I can do to remind myself keep breathing. I jerk out of dazes to find myself staring at nothing and gasping as I suddenly realise there’s not enough air in my lungs. I inhale, trying to bring the oxygen back into my body, into my bloodstream, to fuel the cells to get me moving again. 

Molly drops in but doesn’t stay very long. What do we have to say to each other, really? Mike invites me out for a pint. Mrs Hudson brings cups of tea that I don’t drink, which sit there until she sweeps them away again in a wave of forced cheer. 

Inhale. Exhale. 

Just keep breathing. 

Greg comes by one night and we have a few beers as he tells me about the inquiry that has been opened at the Yard. They’re looking at all of the cases, and even though everything they’re finding is rock solid, it’s going to take a long time to sort everything out. The next week he comes by again, this time with takeaway and more beer. He sleeps on my couch that night but is gone the next morning when I force myself out of bed. It becomes a pattern with us, every week he comes by and we drink and talk. Some weeks are better than others. I start working again, something to get out of the house. Sarah’s sympathetic but distant.

The thoughts run around and around. I really should have known something was wrong when Sherlock refused to go see if Mrs Hudson was all right. I vividly remembered what he’d done to the CIA agent who’d put a gun to her head, but his refusal to go see her suddenly made sense when I saw Mrs Hudson standing in the foyer with a repairman. 

I’m not ashamed of what I say at his grave, but I do mean it when I tell Mrs Hudson that I’m angry. I’m angry he didn’t come to me, that he didn’t allow me to be there with him. 

He’d gone out on his own. I’d tried to make him promise that he wouldn’t go after Moriarty alone. I’d tried to make him swear, months ago, after the kidnapping and the meeting at pool, but he hadn’t. If he’d given his word, he wouldn’t have sent me away. I should have known. I shouldn’t have left. I keep running through scenarios in my head, what I could have done differently that might have changed what happened. Around and around and around, the same thoughts, a million ways that it could have ended differently.

Hindsight is 20/20, my father always said.

I wake up in the front room most mornings, not realising I’d fallen asleep, the telly still on, blaring whatever nonsense from whatever station I’d left it on. The nightmares don’t bother me now. They’re just something that happens. I untangle myself from the blankets on the floor or on the couch if I’ve managed to stay on it and go about my day.

Years before I went to Afghanistan, I’d figured out that nightmares aren’t nightmares because of the violence or the blood or the danger. They’re nightmares because of how they feel. They’re the way the subconscious deals with the things the waking mind cannot face. I didn’t need Sherlock’s psychology journals to tell me that.

_There is no gunfire that cuts across the night, no cloying smell of chlorine, no stink of fear wrapped in claustrophobic wet concrete. There is no screaming, just silence, the cloudy sky mocking me with its vastness. Ghosts of buildings rise around me as I run, always moving too slowly, never ever fast enough. My footfalls slap echoslap echoslap echo strangely. I don’t know if I’m running to something or away from something, but I keep going, have to keep going, inhale, exhale, inhale exhale inhaleexhale._

_Someone. Not something, someone. I’m running to someone._

_There was someone, someone I had to talk to or listen to or comfort or touch or kiss. But they’re--he’s--not there, not anymore. I don’t know where to find him, or how, or why I’m trying to get to him other than the fact that I don’t know where he is and it’s killing me, tearing me apart, stripping me down in ways I’d never imagined. It hurts so much I can hardly breathe, the space between breaths takes an eternity, but I keep going because if I go fast enough I can save him, can stop whatever’s going to happen, can keep him safe (whole, intact, healthy, alive). Inhale exhale. Inhale exhale. Inhale._

_I run through the grey rain and past the grey buildings and under the grey sky across the grey pavement. I’m panting, I can’t catch my breath, exhale, I’ve been running for too long, inhale, I haven’t run this long since the Army, and my leg is starting to throb. Exhale. Inhale._

_My footsteps slow (exhale. Inhale. Exhale.), the pavement and the sky and the buildings all fading and smudging into a large grey blur as blood, red and shockingly vibrant against the grey, begins to run on the pavement. Inhale. I’m too late. Exhale. A lorry rumbles_ by and I wake, everything quiet and still.

Alone.

Inhale.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the end of the series for now. I may pick this back up once season 3 start airing, but that's a decision I'm going to make once I see what happens. I'm marking this complete for now, but that may change. 
> 
> Thank you for reading


End file.
